Keeping track of website updates (Arevenca/Madasi, Derwick, Ovarb)

One fun thing I like to do is watch when web pages are changed or removed. As I look into possibly untoward behaviour in the oil industry, I keep coming across situations where information disappears from the Internet. I give you three recent examples. Each one is minor, and I don’t want to speculate on people’s motives. I have no problem with privacy. I just don’t like memory holes, where information of public value was public and then disappears. So I am preserving and pointing out a few tidbits.

1. Madasi Oil, a trading company in Puerto Rico that offers such products as JP54 and D2, updated its “press” page to omit mentions of Arevenca.

It used to say:

MADASI OIL President and CEO Marcos Da silva Castro, Headed a Meeting at AREVENCA Headquarters in Aruba with the purpose of discussing AEREVENCA Plans for world wide development. President Da Silva met with AREVENCA President and CEO Francisco Javier Gonzalez. As part of MADASI team, present were AREVENCA Partners Joel Racet, Javier Estevez. Also present were Aaron Jay Fosset from Fosset and associates and Miguel D. Lausell Attorney at Law. MADASI is The exclusive Business representative of AREVENCA in The USA and Puerto Rico.

In a couple phone interviews in recent months, Mr. Da Silva has told me he was a victim of Arevenca, like so many others. But rather than go public condemning Arevenca for scamming his oil company, Madasi has just deleted that text, along with the photos of Madasi people meeting with Arevenca in Aruba. I didn’t download the whole site, unfortunately, and Madasi has the remarkable good fortune that it’s also not archived at Archive.org or anywhere else on the open internet.

Madasi has also deleted all mentions of “Gatrex” from its website. Gatrex had glowing praise in Madasi’s brochure from January of last year: “GATREX is one of the biggest oil derivates trading company in the world, with the most reliable trade record in this industry as of today, this incredible joint venture has put MADASI in the position to build one of the most important Oil derivates networks in Latin America, as its exclusive partner in the area for marketing its products.”

Now, Gatrex is gone, replaced by “Shell, Corp” and “Conoco Phillips.” I have archived the old Madesi packet for your reading pleasure, in case you want to compare it with the new one.

2. Derwick Associates. I recently reread Cesar Batiz’s masterful investigation into overcharging by US-based suppliers to Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. Looking for more information about Derwick, I saw something very odd.

The second hit when searching for this company, that “Devil’s Excrement” post, gave an error: 404 not found. The page wasn’t there. Luckily Google still had it in the cache. Here’s a PDF of the cached version, unfortunately missing the comments. I’m sure the Devil had a good reason to take down the post, but hey, I have a good reason to put it back. That being: memory holes scare me. The strange thing about that article is that it doesn’t say anything more damning than what had already been reported. Just that Derwick is a new company based out of an address in Ft Lauderdale airport and that it got a lot of contracts for Venezuela electricity plants. Not much that Batiz didn’t also say in his story, which is reposted all over the web (albeit in Spanish — remind me to translate that). The only new thing is that they are in a building with US Customs. Which is, I suppose, the kind of thing that gets conspiracy theories flowing.

3. Ovarb. Another one of the companies in Batiz’s report from last year was Ovarb. This is a minor thing, but the Ovarb website was then registered to Ottavio Cautilli, as captured at the time here and also still visible here.

Now there’s nothing wrong with changing to a more anonymous domain record. But Cautilli has been a bit of a mystery, since his name doesn’t show up anywhere else in Ovarb Industrial’s filings or website. It’s the kind of thing that makes me look closer — for example, at his marriage. More on that soon. I wrote Cautilli to ask for comments and he hasn’t written back.

Madasi Oil… This is a post-box company that asks for your precise bank details, no less than on an open unencrypted webpage, in order to ‘register’ with them. What kind of reputable company asks for that kind of information as a first step in a relationship? Why do they ask? Are they going to call your bank and verify details, make sure you are who you say you are or have trade-worthy credit? Of course not – no real bank would disclose your information without your consent (which in any event the form does not purport to request).This is utterly crazy and surely only a sign that they want your information for fraud. Or am I missing something, is there a good reason for this?

FlyAruba has launched a new website (!) flyarubaairlines.com …even though they have no permit to fly, no aircraft and are not paying several employees in training wages. Apparently they can pay digitalspot for making the website..??

Aruba Airlines is actually a real company started by locals from Aruba. They had an actual AOC in Aruba flying a Piper Navajo twin. The story is that they were bought by one or more individuals from Venezuela who want to grow them into a major airline flying Airbus aircraft.
The AOC was suspended over a year ago due to ‘unsafe’ operations. They were reportedly close to getting it back or already have it back, but they still are not flying. Their Navajo is still parked close to where the Fly Aruba A320 was parked.
To go from a Navajo to an Airbus is a major undertaking, that will take a lot of time and money to achieve. Personally I am very doubtful about their possibility of success.

The fact that FlyAruba can easily be confused with Aruba Airlines is another sneaky tactic…as far as I know they are not the same. The only reason I can think of why “Mr. Arevenca” tried/tries to set up an airline on Aruba is that he caught on to some locals who were/are trying this. These locals are looking for investors and so were an easy victim. If Mr. FJG can then persuade others to invest too he has his hands on “real” money and -BINGO ! I must say this is only a theory…but he must find a way of turning his stories into cash. There is also a “fundacion arevenca” officially registered in Madrid with a capital of Euro 30K, so here too he probably persuaded some sponsors for pocket money.
Again, speculation but…

Keeping track of Ovarb:http://caracaschronicles.com/2011/09/21/%C2%A1que-ovarbaridad/
Que Ovarbaridad!
Posted on September 21, 2011 by Francisco Toro
What do you call a firm that had existed for less than three months when it landed a $252 million contract to sell a PDVSA-subsidiary (Bariven) equipment that usually sells for $112 million? A firm whose sole legal representative gives her address as 4023 West Davis Street, Conroe, Texas, which is the address for a car wash? A firm that claims to have clients in nine countries, but has no Google Trail of ever having done anything other than sell Bariven over-priced Rolls Royce turbines? A firm whose CEO has no Google trail at all beyond a Facebook page with a profile photo taken in front of a Budweiser poster? A firm with a single promotional video stitched together out of stock footage with a grand total of 27 views as of this morning?

The actual address is 4203 West Davis Street,Conroe,Texas 77304
The legal name is GC3 Services LLC, doing business as, SUDS GRAND PRIX CARWASH
Owned by Roberto Enrique Rincon and Jose Roberto Rincon,but I believe Roberto uses his second last name which is BRAVO,as you can see it is OVARB spelled backwards.
How creative can one get.

The OVARB company is run by Jose Roberto Rincon,son of Roberto Enrique Rincon owner of Trdequip Services and Marine,who is also involved in countless number of scams.You might want to look into a few of their companies.(Reliable Process and Instruments)( NOCNIR) as you can see that is their last name spelled backwards,also Twins and Associations for the other two sons of Roberto who just happen to be twins.

Hi Jeff, nice of you to drop by. My pay comes from various news organizations. I’m not a very good seeper, but your good wishes are well taken. I’ll keep trying. I’m not sure which kinds of proof you’re asking about. I do have some good whisky here, which supposedly has 40 proof. Sounds like you’re familiar with that stuff. And it’s funny you should mention CARMA, because I am at this moment writing about astronomy, and while I wasn’t familiar with that particular instrument before, I appreciate the tip. It’s fascinating. Keep in touch!

Interesting, Setty being acused of bashing Arevenca. Why don’t these persons then prove Arevenca is real ? That would certainly convince me, honestly !
Otherwise, it remains what it is now – fantasyland. Only, this fantasyland has real victims. For example several dozen people on Aruba who get no pay and are facing personal crisis. Despite winning a legal case against FlyAruba and it’s owner F.J.G. (of Arevenca), they are still not getting pay.
Aruban news site 24ora.com has two articles in which comments start to concentrate on the present Labor Minister and his relationship with F.J.G. and his (supposed?) daughter.
So, the ground under F.J.G.’s feet must be getting very hot by now…

Arevenca refinery is moving to Suriname Now that they have a bad reputation in Aruba now to Suriname I do not understand how this organization is still doing what they want they pretend they are a refinery

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Why I’m here

I'm Steven Bodzin, a reporter and investigator. I have lived in Chile, Venezuela, and Canada, and am now working at REDD Intelligence in New York. You can see my paid work here. I continue to follow South America and I'm especially interested in corruption in the energy industry. Here, I share some of the sights, experiences and half-baked thoughts that I am not sure I'll ever get paid to publish, or little leads that might help attract new sources. If you know more about any of these stories, please share. You can contact me at settysoutham@gmail.com.